WFR054/WFRV 001: Whitehaus Family Record Family Record (2XLP)

A double vinyl LP compilation of tracks from 26 artists associated with the Whitehaus in Jamaica Plain.

that summer you moved quickly. there was no time after work to go home before the show so you pack those boots in your bag in the morning when you left the new apartment, made a call during a cigarette break and scribbled an address, a part of town you don’t know but go alone anyway, all the streets look the same but you find it, from the outside it looks like no one’s home and at the bottom of the dark stairs you panic. you almost turn and run but you don’t and the door opens for your knock and there’s a smiling face on the other side…

seasons become other seasons and yet again and again, when you go shopping at the local grocer you know the cashier and tell the sweet boy how well he sang last night, you are location now, faces have become friends, friends become roommates, and front doors become memories. And there’s the stoop where you broke up with that guy from Brattleboro, there’s the porch where Austin taught you to juggle, there’s the parking lot where everybody plays communist soccer in the spring…

now under your skin a record is written of the electric stutterspit heartbeat of a place, made of movement and songs, made of history and fiction, and yes, it was written by everyone. Yes, the people all of them that live inside and outside and outside, you look like a giant. Better than Mount Rushmore. More like the river, standing to its feet, Yes, you can hear it. Can’t you hear it? The Sun is applauding… (Brian Stephen Ellis)